Introduction

Part of the Microsoft announcement to support SAP workloads on Microsoft Azure earlier this year ( SAP-on-Azure announcement ) was the message that SAP HANA Developer Edition deployments will be possible too. The deployment vehicle for SAP HANA Developer Edition is the SAP Cloud Appliance Library called SAP CAL. SAP published articles and documentation related to the topic :

To understand why the step-by-step process described below works this way, it’s necessary to explain what happens in the background. The SAP HANA Dev Edition is not provided in form of a single ready-to-use image in the Azure gallery. The VM which finally includes the SAP HANA Dev Edition will be assembled dynamically using an OS image from the Azure gallery and then adding the SAP software. As the SAP CAL portal triggers the necessary processes to do this inside a customer subscription it needs appropriate access permissions. In the case of Azure, this means that a customer has to enter the subscription ID to tell SAP CAL where to create the VM. Additionally, a management certificate is necessary for authorization given the activities which SAP CAL tries to initiate.
More information about Azure certificates can be found here.

Step-by-Step Guide

The SAP CAL will create the HANA Dev edition VM in a customer’s Azure subscription. Therefore it’s of course the first step to get such a subscription. One can simply go to the Azure home page and start getting one or use an existing MSDN account – see the following two screenshots.
Figure 1 : go to the Azure home page to get a subscription
Figure 2 : another option would be to activate Microsoft Azure access within an existing MSDN account
Figure 3 : the entry point for working with a SAP HANA Dev Edition on Azure is the SAP Cloud Appliance Library also called SAP CAL
Figure 4 : scrolling down on the SAP CAL website shows the steps which are necessary to deploy a solution
Figure 5 : starting with step 1, one needs a registered user
Figure 6 : after login under the solutions tab search for “hana dev edition”. The interesting one is version 1.0 Rev 80. Please note, trying to activate it will fail as long as there is no account associated to the solution
Figure 7 : so one has to create an account under the “Accounts” tab
Figure 8 : first step of the SAP CAL account creation is to give it a name
Figure 9 : next step is the selection of the cloud provider which is “Microsoft Azure” in our case. For Microsoft Azure the so-called subscription ID has to be entered. SAP CAL requires this information to know where to build the HANA Dev Edition VM. Once the account is created it shows up in the table under the “Accounts” tab
Figure 10 : to get the Azure subscription ID, one option is to login to the Azure portal ( not the new version yet ) and scroll down on the left side to “SETTINGS”. Under the “Subscription” tab copy the ID from the appropriate subscription in case there are multiple of them
Figure 11 : after entering the Azure subscription ID in SAP CAL, a dialog will show up which asks to download a “Management Certificate”. This was explained in the intro section. SAP CAL will dynamically assemble a new VM within the customer Azure subscription. To get appropriate permissions for doing this, Microsoft Azure requires a management certificate
Figure 12 : before moving on in SAP CAL, it’s necessary to upload the Azure management certificate which was downloaded earlier. Otherwise, the VM creation via SAP CAL in Azure will not work. One can look at the downloaded certificate to check some details like “Issuer” or the expiration date “Valid to”. These details can be seen on the Azure portal later on
Figure 13 : like before, in order to copy the Azure subscription ID one option to upload the management certificate is to scroll down on the left side to “Settings”. Under the “Management Certificates” tab, it’s possible to upload a new certificate to the Azure subscription via the “UPLOAD” button at the bottom of the portal window
Figure 14 : after uploading the certificate it will be listed on the Azure portal. One will recognize the details which were shown in figure 12 – issuer and expiration date
Figure 15 : back in SAP CAL under the “Solutions” tab, it’s now allowed to activate the solution. This task will do the activation and association to the account which was created before. Afterwards, it’s possible to create the VM instance on Microsoft Azure. Just click on “Create Instance”
Figure 16 : to create an instance ( Azure VM ) again, a name is needed which will be used as the VM name on Azure later on. One has to select the appropriate account and an Azure region. The latter one was “West Europe” in this sample
Figure 17 : right now there is only one VM size available for HANA Dev Edition on Azure : A7 ( 8 virtual CPUs, 56GB memory ). SAP CAL lists all the endpoints it will create for the Azure VM
Figure 18 : next step in SAP CAL is the setting of the master password for the solution
Figure 19 : regarding the scheduling options “Manually activate and suspend” was chosen. One can skip the next step and then finish via the final summary screen. This will trigger the VM creation process on Microsoft Azure
Figure 20 : on the Azure portal, one will find the new VM and all related details
Figure 21 : when looking at the VM on the Azure portal, one will also find all the endpoints which were shown in SAP CAL before under the “ENDPOINTS” tab
Figure 22 : the “dashboard” of the Azure VM shows the VM disks and the corresponding Azure storage account. Going to “Storage” on the left side of the Azure portal one will find the Storage Account which was created by SAP CAL as well as two containers
Figure 23 : when the Azure VM is up and running, one can just enter the Azure public IP address of the VM in the Browser. This will start the HANA Dev Edition environment
Figure 24 : another option is to download the SAP HANA Studio and install it locally on-premise
Figure 25 : once the HANA Studio is installed, one can connect to the HANA Dev Edition instance running on Azure ( deployed via SAP CAL )